Entities like Amazon will have lots more cash than ESPN, CBS, ABC, etc....

Here is an article on how high tech companies may cherry pick the most popular schools to pay, breaking up existing conferences in the future.


"Again, back to my friend at Amazon. “We’re still seven or eight years away,” he said, “but if we had to restructure the landscape today, we would not start by negotiating with a conference. We don’t care about the SEC, Big 12 of Big 10 as a whole. In our opinion, those entities are not our focus.

“Instead, we would want to identify 30 or 40 teams that command the biggest audience. That may be by reputation or location, but generally we all know that there are members in every one of these conferences that frankly don’t move the needle.

“We would not want to pay for broadcast rights for a team with a fraction of the audience when we could use most of our available cash to tie down high profile teams."




"Another change, TV markets will not be as big of a factor as overall fan bases. In other words, a Michigan fan may live in Los Angeles or Miami. Their overall following will mean more than just getting the fragmented Chicago TV market locked up. Some teams, such as Notre Dame, and other 'name brand' schools like Ohio State, Oklahoma and Alabama, will also rise in value, as seen by streaming providers."



https://247sports.com/college/oklahoma/A...-118642101

From the same article

Most likley to make the 'Big Dog' list, (according to Top Programs by Value - WSJ ):

In order: Ohio State; Texas; Oklahoma; Alabama; Michigan; Notre Dame; Georgia; Tennessee; Auburn; Florida; Penn State; Texas A&M; Nebraska; South Carolina; Iowa; Arkansas; Wisconsin; Washington; Florida State; Oregon; Michigan State; Mississippi; Clemson; Southern California; Arizona State; UCLA.

Doesn't seem very well thought through. It's all well and good to say that you don't care about conferences except

1) There are increased costs to negotiating rights deals with 35-40 individual schools rather than 5-6 conferences.

2) It's not really clear that networks are really paying for Washington State or Wake Forest. If the ACC gets $25M a year, it's much more likely that ESPN has internally value Florida State at $45M/yr and Wake Forest at $5M/yr rather than wanting Florida State at $25M/yr and being forced to pay the same for Wake Forest.

3) Part of the value in buying ACC rights as a whole is that if you really want Florida State, you also ensure you get their games when they play at Wake Forest or at Syracuse or at Pitt or whatever other school you don't view as marketable.

Interesting piece. Sounds good in theory, but in practice that would be a nightmare. Even if this is a football only conference, you are going to destroy local rivalries and fan support and local engagement will wilt over time.

I thought by Tech, you were talking about Arkansas Tech. Click bait.

(05-31-2018 07:45 AM)Gamecock Wrote:  Interesting piece. Sounds good in theory, but in practice that would be a nightmare. Even if this is a football only conference, you are going to destroy local rivalries and fan support and local engagement will wilt over time.

I don't get the impression Amazon would be vying for creating a superconference consisting of the "best of the best". More likely they'd set up a nonconference scheduling agreement between these 30-40 schools and have the rights to those nonconference games.

I don't know how far Disney is actually behind. They are currently building a online platform. As for Netflix. They have said time and time again that they don't have any interest is live sports program.

That could very well change the face of college sports. I wonder how the schools not chosen would react. Somehow, I can't see them simply sitting back and letting the big dogs have their cake (the riches from the tech sponsor) and eat it too (get the benefits of being in a conference for all other sports).

No doubt Notre Dame would be in the favored group. I wonder how that institution would deal philosophically with the implications of such a split. Might there be concerns that athletics is now driving the bus in South Bend?

And I wonder about the implications for a school like Clemson. One might think because of their current success that they would be selected to be part of this elite group. But would a company like Amazon see them as a school that "moves the needle" on a national basis for the long term? Ten years ago, if this had happened, I doubt they'd have made the cut.

What happens to schools that make the cut now, but are judged by Amazon to no longer move the needle when their initial contract is up? If their contract isn't renewed, will they be welcomed back by the schools they abandoned?

What about schools that excel in basketball, but not in football? They are national brands, like Kansas, UNC, Duke. Would Amazon be satisfied to be a player during football season only? Would those schools agree to be the road kill during football season so they could be included for their hoops prowess?

Who plays whom in soccer, baseball, lacrosse, track? Do women's sports get separated from the men's because none of them move the needle?

There are a lot of implications to think about. But when the time comes that Amazon is ready, schools won't have time then to consider them. Their institutional deliberative processes are too slow and ponderous. They need to be thinking about them now. But I doubt they will at an institutional level.

At the end of the day, are there really 30-40 national brands, or is the number much smaller? And would anyone turn down the big bucks if they get an offer?

Way more questions than answers for me.

The problem though is ACC teams are all off the table until 2034, SEC only has tier 1 games until then as well. So that's a lot of good teams off the table right off the bat.

(05-31-2018 08:16 AM)stever20 Wrote:  The problem though is ACC teams are all off the table until 2034, SEC only has tier 1 games until then as well. So that's a lot of good teams off the table right off the bat.

And that’s the great thing about it.
It’s not like 13 of the ACC teams are going to demand any tech money anyway, so it’s irrelevant that their media deal with ESPN ends in 2038.

Basically, all those teams would have to going Indy in football and probably land in a mid major conference for everything else. Otherwise, it could more or less be having the conference 3rd tier rights to all the schools for Amazon to slosh their money around.

(05-31-2018 07:51 AM)McKinney Wrote:  

(05-31-2018 07:45 AM)Gamecock Wrote:  Interesting piece. Sounds good in theory, but in practice that would be a nightmare. Even if this is a football only conference, you are going to destroy local rivalries and fan support and local engagement will wilt over time.

I don't get the impression Amazon would be vying for creating a superconference consisting of the "best of the best". More likely they'd set up a nonconference scheduling agreement between these 30-40 schools and have the rights to those nonconference games.

How many of those schools have the rights to all their OOC games? Now, if Clemson plays Notre Dame at South Bend, Notre Dame has the rights, which they have sold to NBC. If they play at Clemson, the Tigers have the rights, but they were sold to ESPN by the conference through the GoR.

To make that suggestion work, all the P5 conferences would have to release the rights to all non-conference games, at least for the schools that were part of the scheduling agreement. Why would they do that?

Even if it could be made to work, that wouldn't provide Amazon with much inventory - no more than a couple of games a week. What do they do with their platform the rest of the time?

I dont know that the sport would change as much as one might think. For one thing, Tech will be blown away by how much resistance they will meet when they try to shake up the way the tradition driven slow moving old guard that controls college football operates.

Secondly, this proposal is affirmation of something I have said I thought was coming for a while---but I think people may be misreading what it means.

Since the beginning of the TV era, the trend has moved toward smaller and smaller units of TV rights negotiations. Originally, the NCAA negotiated one TV deal for everyone. Then, after the 1984 Oklahoma Regents court decision that stated that individual schools were the true owner of their sports rights, the negotiating unit began to get smaller. First was a coalition of conferences and independents that formed the College Football Association (CFA) that negotiated a deal for the major conferences and indys. Then, the SEC and Big10 decided to break away from the CFA, starting a new dynamic where individual conferences would be the primary negotiation unit. The next logical step in this trend is that individual schools become the base negotiating unit.

Where I think we might be misreading the tea leaves is realignment. Just because schools are getting individual TV deals doesn't mean conferences have to realign. TV deals and conferences are not the same. One is a TV rights transaction. One is a scheduling deal. They do not have to affect one another.

In my opinion, this new method of each school having its own TV deal actually makes it EASIER for traditional conferences to stay together. There is no longer any need to for the Big Dogs to change conferences to maximize TV deals under this system. You are paid for the size of your fan base regardless of conference. As for the have not's of the major P5 conferences--they still benefit from having valuable home games vs 'Bama, or Ohio St, or USC (etc) to sell. They wont make as much as the big dogs, but they will be fine. Basically, what Im saying is there wont be any real reason for the Big Dogs in the each P5 conference to sacrifice years of tradition and history to reform into some new league---at least not in the next round of TV deals. What this really amounts to is a new era of uneven revenue sharing within the conferences.

(05-31-2018 07:51 AM)McKinney Wrote:  

(05-31-2018 07:45 AM)Gamecock Wrote:  Interesting piece. Sounds good in theory, but in practice that would be a nightmare. Even if this is a football only conference, you are going to destroy local rivalries and fan support and local engagement will wilt over time.

I don't get the impression Amazon would be vying for creating a superconference consisting of the "best of the best". More likely they'd set up a nonconference scheduling agreement between these 30-40 schools and have the rights to those nonconference games.

I suppose it would be possible to have three new conferences of 8 teams each. They could each bargain collectively for their 7 game conference schedule, allowing each member to bargain on its own for its 5 OOC games. That way, they would all have a conference to fall back on for all other sports.

Midwest: Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan St, Penn St, Wisconsin, Texas, Oklahoma, Texas A&M

East: Alabama, Auburn, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, LSU, Florida State, Clemson

Pacific: Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Arizona, Arizona St

But Amazon would still have to bid against Disney and Fox, unless you expect them to get out of the big time sports business rather than compete.

And how do all those schools extricate themselves from existing contracts? The buyouts or lawsuit settlements would be steep enough it would take a while before anybody saw much of a profit from the move.

And, collectively, these elite programs would have to get used to having on average 3.5 losses every year even if they never lose an OOC game (that is to say if they never play one of the other 16 teams OOC). There's a reason Ohio State likes being in the Big Ten.

(05-31-2018 07:10 AM)TerryD Wrote:  Entities like Amazon will have lots more cash than ESPN, CBS, ABC, etc....

Here is an article on how high tech companies may cherry pick the most popular schools to pay, breaking up existing conferences in the future.


"Again, back to my friend at Amazon. “We’re still seven or eight years away,” he said, “but if we had to restructure the landscape today, we would not start by negotiating with a conference. We don’t care about the SEC, Big 12 of Big 10 as a whole. In our opinion, those entities are not our focus.

“Instead, we would want to identify 30 or 40 teams that command the biggest audience. That may be by reputation or location, but generally we all know that there are members in every one of these conferences that frankly don’t move the needle.

“We would not want to pay for broadcast rights for a team with a fraction of the audience when we could use most of our available cash to tie down high profile teams."




"Another change, TV markets will not be as big of a factor as overall fan bases. In other words, a Michigan fan may live in Los Angeles or Miami. Their overall following will mean more than just getting the fragmented Chicago TV market locked up. Some teams, such as Notre Dame, and other 'name brand' schools like Ohio State, Oklahoma and Alabama, will also rise in value, as seen by streaming providers."



https://247sports.com/college/oklahoma/A...-118642101

So Georgia Tech engineers at Amazon will shape the future of college football?

Picking off the best 40ish assets works well until your competitors decide to pay up for the existing leagues to keep the big draws out of their competition’s hands. The competing giant would say “paying Vandy is better than missing out on Bama entirely” for instance.

Money will drive realignment as it always has but we aren’t talking about one tech giant, it’s several so expecting a dramatic shift from the type of change that’s happened with several prior competitors operating in a similar bidding process seems a bit premature.

(05-31-2018 10:31 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(05-31-2018 07:51 AM)McKinney Wrote:  

(05-31-2018 07:45 AM)Gamecock Wrote:  Interesting piece. Sounds good in theory, but in practice that would be a nightmare. Even if this is a football only conference, you are going to destroy local rivalries and fan support and local engagement will wilt over time.

I don't get the impression Amazon would be vying for creating a superconference consisting of the "best of the best". More likely they'd set up a nonconference scheduling agreement between these 30-40 schools and have the rights to those nonconference games.

How many of those schools have the rights to all their OOC games? Now, if Clemson plays Notre Dame at South Bend, Notre Dame has the rights, which they have sold to NBC. If they play at Clemson, the Tigers have the rights, but they were sold to ESPN by the conference through the GoR.

To make that suggestion work, all the P5 conferences would have to release the rights to all non-conference games, at least for the schools that were part of the scheduling agreement. Why would they do that?

For the same reason all realignment has occurred: $$$. In the cases where there are a number of "slected schools" in the conference (like B1G), a tax may be needed. If "selected schools"*tax*Nonconference Amazon + Conference ESPN > All games ESPN for the "unselected schools", then it'd make sense for the conference. In the cases where only one or a couple of schools from the conference are selected (like Big-XII), the conference may go for the move simply because ESPN - some nonconference games rights < ESPN - "selected schools". For example, the Big XII's TV contract would be hurt more by losing Texas entirely than losing the rights to Texas' nonconference games.

(05-31-2018 10:31 AM)ken d Wrote:  Even if it could be made to work, that wouldn't provide Amazon with much inventory - no more than a couple of games a week. What do they do with their platform the rest of the time?

I don't think Amazon needs to run live programming 24/7. If they want to show only a couple games a week, what's stopping them from doing so? The rest of the time their platform has an unbelievable assortment of on-demand content across every genre of entertainment. Amazon's streaming platform is not so much an ESPN competitor as it is a Comcast competitor (media production and distribution).

(05-31-2018 07:10 AM)TerryD Wrote:  “Instead, we would want to identify 30 or 40 teams that command the biggest audience."

Amazon wouldn't "broadcast" anything. They don't have an over the air network, or even a cable channel. What they would do, if anything, is show live sports via streaming like the programming they have now for Amazon Prime members. They would charge money, per game or per season or per year, to watch the games.

Which means that Amazon would want to sign up the teams with the most fans who would pay to watch, and that won't be exactly the same list as the list of teams with the most fans who will watch as long as the telecasts are free or bundled for no extra cost with all of the other TV they watch.

It also assumes that today's most popular teams will be happy to have well over half of today's "free" audience not watching their games, because that has been the experience with Premier League telecasts in England, where fans care a helluva lot more about soccer than US fans do about college football.

If we have to pay "extra" to watch the most popular CFB teams while the NFL is still mostly on free over the air TV, then all but the most diehard fans will just get their football fix from the NFL.

(05-31-2018 11:19 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-31-2018 07:10 AM)TerryD Wrote:  “Instead, we would want to identify 30 or 40 teams that command the biggest audience."

Amazon wouldn't "broadcast" anything. They don't have an over the air network, or even a cable channel. What they would do, if anything, is show live sports via streaming like the programming they have now for Amazon Prime members. They would charge money, per game or per season or per year, to watch the games.

Which means that Amazon would want to sign up the teams with the most fans who would pay to watch, and that won't be exactly the same list as the list of teams with the most fans who will watch as long as the telecasts are free or bundled for no extra cost with all of the other TV they watch.

It also assumes that today's most popular teams will be happy to have well over half of today's "free" audience not watching their games, because that has been the experience with Premier League telecasts in England, where fans care a helluva lot more about soccer than US fans do about college football.

If we have to pay "extra" to watch the most popular CFB teams while the NFL is still mostly on free over the air TV, then all but the most diehard fans will just get their football fix from the NFL.

Wait so this “pay-per-view” thing isn’t new and isn’t what schools have chosen before???
Lol

(05-31-2018 11:15 AM)McKinney Wrote:  

(05-31-2018 10:31 AM)ken d Wrote:  Even if it could be made to work, that wouldn't provide Amazon with much inventory - no more than a couple of games a week. What do they do with their platform the rest of the time?

I don't think Amazon needs to run live programming 24/7. If they want to show only a couple games a week, what's stopping them from doing so? The rest of the time their platform has an unbelievable assortment of on-demand content across every genre of entertainment. Amazon's streaming platform is not so much an ESPN competitor as it is a Comcast competitor (media production and distribution).

I know my ignorance is showing here. Does Amazon already show content produced by someone else? And if so, how does one view it and how do they pay for it?

I'm having a hard time seeing how there will be more money to be made by schools in the future than there is now. But I also recognize that, for the rich programs, more money is nice but not necessary. They already have enough money to do what they need to do. The only thing that really matters is not how much, but how much more than your competitors. So if you can insure that your competitors will get a lot less in the future, while you only get a little less, you have still won.